A woman in her 80s was knocked to the ground and scratched across the stomach early Thursday morning after a bear broke into her home on the western side of Estes Park, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife. The woman awoke to find the animal already inside her second-floor kitchen, and when she confronted it, the bear charged her before fleeing back out through the same first-floor window it had used to get in. She called 911, and Larimer County Sheriff's deputies responded to find her with injuries serious enough to require treatment.
Per Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the bear had entered through an unlocked but closed first-floor window, a detail that has become a familiar refrain in a summer of escalating wildlife conflicts across Colorado. As reported by CBS Colorado, deputies who searched the property afterward could not locate the bear, and the agency has since asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service for help tracking it down. CPW has also set traps in the area to remove any bear found to pose an immediate risk to public safety, noting that heavy bear activity has already been reported nearby.
A Record Year for Bear Conflicts Statewide
Thursday's attack was the seventh reported bear mauling of a person in Colorado this year, according to 9News, with earlier incidents this year in Eagle-Vail, Steamboat Springs, Aspen, Jefferson County, and Boulder County. Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesperson Jason Duetsch said the agency is fielding an unprecedented number of bear reports this year, and urged residents to remove any food or trash that might draw the animals close. The station's report notes that multiple bears have broken into occupied homes and vehicles across the state this August alone.
The scale of the surge is stark: CPW has logged more than 6,000 bear reports so far this year, roughly double what the agency recorded during the same stretch last year. The same report describes one bear that became trapped inside a car in Colorado Springs and died as a result. Severe drought has depleted natural forage such as chokecherries and mast crops, pushing hungry bears toward populated foothill towns just as they enter hyperphagia — the late-summer metabolic drive that pushes bears to seek up to 20,000 calories a day before winter denning, according to 9News.
Days Apart: A Pattern of Close Calls
The Estes Park attack came less than a week after a fisherman in his 60s was knocked down and bitten on the legs by a subadult female bear along the South Platte River in Jefferson County on August 21, an incident detailed by CBS News. Bystanders scared that bear off, and USDA tracking dogs later located it so it could be euthanized. The angler was not carrying fish at the time, but drought had already stripped much of the region's natural food supply.
Nine days before that, on August 18, a woman in Steamboat Springs suffered facial wounds when a bear entered her home through a sliding glass door at 1 a.m. and struck her as she tried to push it back outside, according to the Denver Gazette. And just up Highway 36 from Estes Park, a young black bear broke through an unlatched window screen at a Lyons pie shop on August 15 to eat a blueberry pie; a break-in Hoodline previously reported echoed a 2015 heist at the same storefront.
What Happens to a Bear That Attacks
Under Colorado Parks and Wildlife policy, any bear that attacks and injures a person is designated a dangerous bear and must be euthanized once captured, with DNA samples sent to the University of Wyoming Forensics Lab to confirm the animal's identity. That same public-safety standard applied in late July, when CPW officers euthanized a bear that had broken into an occupied Boulder County trailer, reasoning that entering a structure with a person present makes an animal an immediate threat, according to CBS News.
Colorado's black bear population is estimated at between 17,000 and 20,000 animals statewide, and no verified grizzly bear sightings have been recorded in Colorado since 1979. In the Estes Valley, a Wildlife Protection Ordinance enacted by Larimer County and the Town of Estes Park already requires residents and businesses to use bear-resistant containers or keep trash indoors until pickup mornings, and it bans bird feeders from April through November. State lawmakers went further in June, enacting fines of $1,000 for a first offense of improper food storage at campgrounds and up to $5,000 for a third offense, according to GearJunkie.
CPW is urging residents to lock windows, doors, and vehicles, keep trash secured at all times, and take down bird feeders until Thanksgiving, since feeding wildlife is illegal and contributes to habituation. Officials say bear activity is expected to keep climbing as the animals search for food before denning, and they're asking anyone who spots a bear or has a conflict to report it directly to Colorado Parks and Wildlife. For now, it remains unknown whether the USDA tracking team will be able to locate and confirm the bear responsible for Thursday's attack in western Estes Park before it finds its way into another home.
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